A Stone's Throw

Wow, what an awesome night at FP Carthage tonight!  We had our annual Christmas movie night!  We watched the movie “UP!” and the whole evening was themed around the movie.  We had lots of popcorn, cupcakes, balloons, laughter and fun!

Allow me to brag a big on one of our KidCity volunteer leaders.  Randa Dysinger is one of our volunteers with our elementary aged kiddos.  She and her husband Matt basically took on this event and boy did she run with it!  She had balloons tied to “sticks”(rolled up brown paper) around a short sheet that summarized all of the things we learned about this year so far.  She did an awesome job…here is what was written on the “stick.”

The movie UP is filled with wonderful expressions of many of the virtues we have learned throughout 2009.  Here are a few…

Compassion

The “Spirit of Adventure” could be the Spirit of Compassion

God showed the greatest compassion to us when He saw our need for a Savior,    He gave us His only Son – Jesus!

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Hope

“Cross your heart”

Jesus promises forgiveness and eternal life in heaven if you believe in Him and invite Him into your heart.  He gives us hope.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

Faith

“Grand Adventure to Paradise Falls”

Life is a grand adventure when you have your faith in Jesus.  The adventure ultimately takes you to our “Paradise Falls” – Heaven!

“In my Father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.” John 14:2

Love

“A Wilderness Explorer is a friend to all… “

Jesus is our friend and He will be a friend to all who believe.  In turn, you can  show love and compassion to anyone by becoming their friend.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.” Matt 22: 37-39

This year, we have learned about the virtues of Love, Hope, Faith, Fairness, Wisdom,  Obedience, Forgiveness, Conviction, Individuality, Cooperation, and Compassion.  Take these virtues and instill them into your heart and mind and invite Jesus into your life.    When you do, Jesus will lift you UP when you are down.  He will help you UP when you fall.  Jesus will cheer you UP when you need a friend.  He will hold you UP during difficult times.  Jesus will take you UP to live an eternal life with Him!

Become UP with compassion and care enough to see someone’s need and then care enough to do something about it!  When you do, you will be a reflection of God’s love and compassion.

How about that?  I am so thankful for a great group of people that I have the opportunity to serve with at Forest Park Carthage!  Great job Randa!

We are studying The DNA of Relationships by Smalley in our LifeGroup on Sunday nights.  It has been a whole lot of fun learning that we are driven by our fears.  It is totally freeing to understand that the fight is often not about the thing we are fighting about. It is actually about a “fear button” that was pushed by the other person and we reacted to that button being pushed (Smalley’s concepts).  I am really excited about the positive things that we all are learning from this study in our group.

I ran across this post from Mark Batterson about fearlessness.  He says that there are only two fears we are born with as a baby…the rest are “learned.”  Man there is some freedom to know that we can learn, through Christ, how to be free from those fears!

I know for a fact that this nugget of truth and promise from God’s word can save us from a whole lot of heartache and pain when we allow the enemy to continue to scare us to death with our fears. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15 ESV)

According to psychologists we’re only born with two fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. That means that every other fear is learned. Which means that every other fear can be unlearned. Here’s a definition of faith: the process of unlearning ungodly fears.

The enemy is a fear monger. He wants to scare the heaven out of you. But I John 4:18 says: “Perfect love casts out all fear.” In other words, as we grow in a love relationship with God we unlearn our fears until the only fear we have is the only healthy and holy fear: the fear of God. And when you fear God you don’t have to fear anything else! Perfect love results in fearlessness.

Evotional.com.

As most of you all know, we are doing a Trunk or Treat as an alternative to Halloween.  However, this particular church is doing a different kind of alternative event.  They are burning books!  Yes, you heard right. Books!  Specifically (are you ready for this?) Bibles that are “perversions of God’s Word.”

All I can say is, “Wow.” Pretty unbelievable considering all of the issues with the KJV and the reliability of modern translations.  The problem with this kind of thinking is that it puts into question all of the translations, especially for recent converts who go to a bookstore to look for a Bible to use.  Many people will call in and ask if we are a KJV only church.  We are not.  We use many different modern translations because we believe they communicate better to a modern audience.  The reason why we use them is so that the Gospel can be communicated clearly to lost people.  We don’t have to explain what Old Shakespearian English means in order for people to find Christ.  There are several great, readable translations that we use here.  Probably the most common versions used around here are: NIV (New International Version); ESV (English Standard Version; NIrV (New International Readers Version–great children’s translation); NASB (New American Standard); NKJV (New King James Version) and of course, there are several KJV (King James Version) floating around.  The Message, by the way, is a paraphrase, not a translation.  It is much like the Good News Bible that I grew up with as the only option for a modern english Bible.

We have some family friends who are Bible translators that have for years risen above this kind of stuff.  They are better people than I am at times. Their heart is to translate the Word of God into a translation that speaks to the heart of the reader.  Having taken eight semesters of Greek and four of Hebrew, it is an unbelievably difficult task to translate these ancient texts into modern language so that people can read it, hear the Gospel, and respond to Christ’s invitation of salvation.

Moral of the story…keep reading whatever translation you have and I believe that God will speak to you!

What translation do you use and why?

Book Burning.